ENK6-2001-00518 Advanced Prediction, Monitoring and Controlling of Anaerobic Digestion Processes Behaviour Towards Biogas Usage in Fuel Cells

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Biological Conversion : EESD (Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development) : Liquid Biofuels and Biogas

Proposal No:	ENK6-2001-00518
Date Prepared:	February 2004
Source:	European Bio-Energy Projects (EUR 20808)

Introduction

Trace gases, such as H₂S, halogenated hydrocarbons, siloxanes and others, are frequently present in biogas. These gases lower the efficiency and durability of fuel cells significantly. That means the utilisation of biogas in fuel cells instead of in usual gas engines for CHP generation causes a dramatic increase in the required purity of the biogas fuel. In addition, in order to construct an adjusted cost-effective biogas cleaning system, knowledge of the occurrence and formation of those trace gases is essential. There is no tool currently available for assessing whether a new substrate can be safely used in a biogas plant.

To cover those userdriven demands towards an advanced anaerobic digestion process, it is important to control the biogas composition under different loading conditions. The successful management of these critical loading conditions is highly relevant to the economy of industrial applications.

Activities

The major work needed to fulfill these objectives includes the development of a knowledge-based decision support tool with the capability to predict trace gases depending on the fermented substrates, and a cost-effective cleaning process able to remove the significant trace gases which are detrimental to fuel cell systems.

On the one hand, the decision-support tool assists the operators of biogas plants in selecting the composition of input substrates causing the lowest possible concentration of trace gases. On the other hand, the decision-support tool provides the ability of the in situ control of the anaerobic digestion (AD) process towards achieving the lowest concentration of trace gases while keeping a maximum yield of CH₄.

Progress

A lot of data must be produced before work can start on modelling and controlling the anaerobic process. Therefore, laboratory reactors with the appropriate sensors and analyses are being operated by partner IAM and Profactor. The main goal of these experiments is the generation of data which can be used to train the neural network.

A structure of the neural net has been developed for the neural network as a start to the training process. This structure is only a first draft and has to be further developed during the training process. During a discussion process with those partners operating industrial biogas plants, the importance of cheap and reliable measurement methods was stressed. It was considered important that, on the one hand a minimum necessary instrumentation for each partners biogas-plant was agreed and, on the other, two versions of the control software would seem to be necessary - a simpler version for those continuously operated small biogas plants with less instrumentation, and a sophisticated version for plants with full process control.

Subsequently, partner IAM developed a client-server software solution for the control program. The prediction program for biogas fermentation with neuronal networks has been included in a Client/Server- Software solution. The original prediction program is located on a server on the World Wide Web, and is waiting for data from the client. Using the client version it is possible for the user to select Excel data files, send all necessar y data for prediction to the ser ver, and get prediction results back to the 'front panel' of the client program. In addition, two fuel cell stations have been designed and constructed by partner CSIC and the first experiments have been carried out. Partner Profactor has done the analytical method development for a comprehensive biogas analyses. And almost all partners were involved in an intensive study concerning available sensors and the testing of reliable methods to measure the main parameters in large biogas plants.

Impact and exploitation

The AMONCO project aims to overcome weaknesses of existing biogas FC/CHP technologies. Relevant European markets will be targeted by specific exploitation activities including the formation of a business interest group which will implement the project results.

Further economic efficiency is of crucial importance for innovative technical developments in order to gain market access. Therefore, a continuous economic evaluation of AMONCO's technical R&D results is necessary to guide the technical developments towards marketability. According to the work plan, the economic evaluation will start in the second part of the project. The work will be based on the partners' vast experience in economic project evaluation and project finance. In this respect, partner EBV will adapt and enhance its profound calculation tool towards the application for the economic evaluation of AMONCO's technological achievements.

The potential of this result is a future general application concerning the economic evaluation of upcoming biogas/fuel cell projects. Developed design criteria for biogas fuel cells, based on the findings of the technical and non-technical results of the different AMONCO work packages (all partners will contribute to this result), along with the conclusions derived from specific biogas fuel cell designs are expected to be just two of the major results.